"Spaces Is the Place on Twitter"

If you have over 600 followers on Twitter, you’re in for a new audio treat.

Spaces is Twitter’s offering in the evolving world of social media, where audio social options are becoming the next big thing. By initially rolling out Spaces to large-follower accounts – ones which have had a positive experience in holding real-time conversations – Twitter is confident that these accounts will transition well into the live audio arena which will draw in followers to connect and have fun during Spaces sessions.

Twitter also has a leg up on a major competitor, Clubhouse - another live audio social media app - where users can, as well, host their own live conversations on various topics, attended by an ‘audience’ of other Clubhouse members. While Clubhouse, which recently launched with an invitation-only method of obtaining its initial users rolled out exclusively for iOS users only, Twitter’s Spaces is available to both Android and iOS users.

Additionally, Twitter also has millions of accounts consisting of celebrities, global financial organizations, tech companies, sports personalities and more who all have long-established pages with dedicated fan bases. With Spaces’ seamless integration into existing Twitter accounts, there would be little reason why these established users would wish to transition over to Clubhouse with much smaller numbers, when they can glean the benefits of remaining put on Twitter.

Since Clubhouse launched a couple of months ago, their downloads already appear to be slowing.

Spaces also has the capability, and has been testing a ticketing option with a few targeted Twitter accounts. Ticketing would allow Spaces users to be able to name their own ticket prices and amount of tickets that would be sold for each of their conversations, enabling them to be able to financially gain, while providing listeners quality content and topics of interest. Naturally, Twitter would benefit from ticket sales, keeping a small portion of the proceeds.

Ticketing would not be the only monetary opportunity available to Twitter account holders. The app is currently testing out “Super Follow” buttons on profiles, as well as a “Tipping” option, where followers and fans can donate money to the users’ pages, providing another advantage over Clubhouse. See our recent article on these two new Twitter advances.

Don’t totally discount Clubhouse, however. Clubhouse does do a good job of allowing its users to easily maneuver through current, live conversation rooms, while Twitter has a little work to put in to make its Spaces more easily discoverable – real time – to its users.

Never one to face a challenge lying down, Facebook is earnestly working on its version of audio social options, as well as Instagram.

It will be interesting to see if Twitter’s Spaces becomes a success. On a platform which is known for its real-time events, Spaces could finally give Twitter the opportunity to monetarily capitalize on this facet for which they are known, while turning it into a successful business proposition for itself and users, alike.